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THE UNIVEESITY OF CHICAGO 

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 

The Decennial Publications 



STUDIES IN POPULAR POETRY 

BY 

PHILIP SCHUYLER ALLEN 

INSTRUCTOR IN GERMAN LITERATURE 



PRINTED FROM VOLUME VII 




CHICAGO 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
1902 



NOV, 10 1902 | 

Copyright Er.iry J 



Copyright 1902 
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 



PRINTED NOVEMBER 1, 1902 



STUDIES IN POPULAR POETRY 



Philip Schuyler Allen 
I 

NATURE INTRODUCTIONS AND VIVIFICATION IN THE OLDER GERMAN 

" VOLKSLIED " 

Thebe are two ways of accounting for any given phenomenon in popular poetry : 
the atavistic and the artistic. The latter term denotes not only the opposite of com- 
munal, in that it places the stress upon the individual as against the group-theory of 
origins, 1 but it forms an exact antithesis to atavistic, in that it insists upon the momen- 
tary, as contrasted with the inherited source of the utterance under discussion. The 
manner of a song is ordinarily artistic, even though its outward form be copied, as is 
so often the case, from the older folk-lyric, for it bears the impress of the individu- 
ality of its author; the matter of a song is ordinarily atavistic, even though it be 
widely varied to suit the needs of a present occasion, for at heart its theme is the same 
as that of precedent, traditional balladry. In Muller's two songs, Thrdnen und Rosen 
and Abrede, 2 the manner is all Muller's, the matter is all the folk-song's; the same 
may be said, in changing ratio, of many a popular song of the eighteenth and nine- 
teenth centuries in Germany ; in fact, if we come to the very root of the matter, and 
do not quibble overmuch as to facts of external resemblance, there have . been few 
songs of these centuries which have not been distinctly atavistic in content. 

Sometimes, however, the external form may be designedly atavistic, as is shown 
clearly in other stanzas of Muller's, 3 when the poet deliberately imitates the Volkslied 
manner, using its very phrases and all the minor aspects of the popular technique. 
Now, what we find so clearly proven in a time and in utterances so near to our own 
that it cannot be denied will doubtless be the case in more remote instances, where 
absolute statement based upon authoritative investigation of fact is denied us. In any 
case, dogmatic assertions as to general principles applying to popular song — in so far 
as insistence is made that the manner and matter of any given Volkslied are such as 
we have it solely because of its debt to the songs of foregoing generations, or, on the 
other hand, solely because of the individual treatment accorded his theme by the poet — 
are indeed but partial assertions of the truth. 

Thus the refrain, so widely employed by the lyric Volkslied, may be either the 
survival of what was originally the whole burden of the song — the intervening stan- 
zas at first but individual modulations or explanations of the refrain — or it may be 

l Gummebe, Old English Ballwls, pp. xlix-lxiv; Bar- 2 Modern Language Notes, Vol. XVI (1901), pp. 37,38. 

vard Stwlics in Philology and Literature, Vol. V, p. 52; 3 Ibid., Vol. XIV (1899), pp. 163, 166 ; Joumalof Germanic 

Beginnings of Poetry, pp. 116 f. Philology, Vol. Ill (1901), pp. 38, 39. 

135 



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Studies in Popular Poetry 



naught but the easily remembered and regularly recurrent interlude of the real drama 
of the song, introduced to maintain the sympathy of its auditors, perhaps by the audi- 
tors themselves. 4 Thus the terseness and vagueness, so common to the Volkslied, 
may be due to the maiming and mangling, the confusion and omission, which are 
the circumstances of its existence through oral transmission ; 5 or, again, they may be 
due to the intense subjectivity of the people who compose the songs — the emotions or 
happenings being so familiar to the author that he considers explanation unnecessary.* 

In the light of what has been considered thus far, one can scarce feel content 
before the knowledge that just in the matter of nature introductions and of vivifica- 
tion the atavistic side of the contention has been omitted in favor of the artistic. 
With a belief in the doctrine that multiple hypotheses clarify, rather than confuse, it 
would seem in all fairness essential to state the atavistic possibility in the treatment of 
nature in the German Volkslied. 

First and chiefest of the causes which transform to myths the facts of everyday 
experience is the belief in the animation of all nature, which in its highest form 
becomes personification. 7 Nature and man act and react upon each other. 

Nature acts upon man. — At the very first man probably did not love nature in 
any wide sense. He came, it may be, to love that corner of it which was the most 
familiar to him, that sheltered abiding-place which hid him oftenest from the rigor of 
the heat or of the cold; but his first feeling for external nature was certainly fear. 
Before he noticed in conscious fashion the odor of the flower, he shrank before the 
blast of the tempest, the blare of the thunder, the blinding lightning, the blackness of 
night. These demonic forces he clad with living shapes, and sacrificed and prayed 
to them. 

Man reacts upon nature. — Almost simultaneously with the above 8 man must have 
noticed that something had left the body of a dead person, which continued to dwell 
in him, which seemed to dwell in the elements around him, in the moving, living 
nature of his environment. What more natural than to discover the voice of the 
dead in the wind — to feel that the soul was continued in the life of inanimate nature? 
Thus would vivification (Beseelung) be no conscious projection of the human life and 
emotions into the natural objects and forces about one; it would rather be a primal 
instinct. We should rid ourselves once for all of the hurtful Ruskinism, pathetic 
fallacy, except in so far as it be employed to connote the last cry of a decadent roman- 
ticism in nature; not a treatment of nature, but a mistreatment of it, as in Heine. 
Hard upon this original vivification would follow the first metaphor; when identity 
between man and nature was not certain, but the resemblance between them recogniz- 
able, there arose the first simile. 

* For the literature see R. M. Meter, Euphorion, Vol. V 6 Wackeenell, Das deutsche Volkslied, p. 18. 

(1898), p. 1; Minob, Neuhochdeutsche Metrik, 2d ed, (1902), 7Tylob, Anfange der Kultur (1873), Vol. I, p. 281; 

p. 532. Cf. also BCchee, Arbeit und Ehythmus, 3d ed. Mogk, Mythologie. PGrundriss, Vol. Ill, 2d ed., p. 250. 
(1902). 8 Perhaps before: E. H. Meyee, Germanische Mytholo- 

* Uhland, Volkslieder, 3d ed., Vol. Ill, p. 9. gie ; Mogk, loc. pit., p. 250. 

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Philip Schuylee Allen 



5 



Now, when especial emergency arose in time of need, by bereavement through 
death for example, especial pleading would be uttered for which the ordinary formulae 
of speech would not suffice, and conscious expression would ensue. Thus would the 
first poetic imagery be made — a lyric hymn to nature in some one of its chief est func- 
tions: lyric; for what is nearer to man than his own emotions? And the mainspring 
for early lyric utterance was not erotic passion, any more than it would be the depic- 
tion of domestic bliss today, 9 but fear or loneliness, inspired by the approach of, or the 
fact of, death. 

When the belief in the demonic forces and shapes of nature had waned, there was 
yet a long period of time when nature remained the chief matter for hymnic outpouring, 
and for several very patent reasons. 

First, it had become stereotyped, like many another formal utterance or ortho- 
doxy, and would not yield until a new conversion came — no, not quite then. A 
priesthood of some sort must have arisen to maintain and cherish the nature-worship. 
Metaphor and simile, instinct in all speech, 10 must soon have crystallized this worship 
into many a formula, incantation, and oracular saying, which would outlast the 
centuries of sequent nature-agnosticism. And then man was never fully converted 
from his original state of mind ; for customs and usages of this late present have their 
origin in the old pagan attitude, 11 and man still feels that something higher than 
himself lies in environing nature. 

Secondly, what was there ever to replace nature in the popular poetry? Heroes 
came to succeed the gods as matter for poetic treatment; and unto heroes in a later 
day came men; and at last in picaresque balladry the lowest dregs of humankind 
followed men. Alliteration gave place to end-rime, and end-rime to the measured 
cadence of the verse ; and often later this very rhythmic cadence surrendered to the 
ebb and flow of the thought which burdened it. Christianity was added to paganism, 
and civilization to Christianity — the social structure changed, chasms of class yawned 
where parity had been, intelligence strove away from ignorance, wealth away from 
poverty. Cities rose, and empires ; foreign models reigned a while supreme ; and 
still, unchangeable throughout, the one present exponent of the infinite, the one 
unfailing analogy to the growth and decay of human life, was everywhere the same 
nature as in the beginning of things, the firmament which showed the handiwork 
more than human. 

Thirdly, there is that in the German character, from the long-ago Sonderwohnen 
am Quell, im Walde down to the nature-pilgrimages of today, which has tended to 
preserve under changed conditions the same nature-worship as that of the earliest 
sources. 12 And the Volkslied has always found its place of sojourn away from the 
haunts of men, close to the heart of outdoor nature. 

o Wf.stebmabck, Human Marriage, p. 357; Qbosse, Be- n Mooh, "Behandlunpr dor volkst&mlichon Sitte, 

ginnings of Art, p. 245. Orumlriss, Vol. Ill, 2d ed., p. 494. 

io Mai MI'llkb, Science of Language, 2d sor., p. 368. uDunoee, liundas, p. xlii. 

137 



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Studies in Popular Poetry 



With all this clearly in mind, is it wise for us to posit as the beginnings of nature- 
depiction in German popular poetry those nature-introductions which let the occurrence 
to be sung appear as in a foreground of landscape, and which are so common in the 
Volkslied from the twelfth century on? 13 With a few bold strokes the landscape or 
the atmosphere is sketched in, and particularly fitted to the sentiment of the following 
verses. 14 And such introduction has been commonly esteemed, in its simplest form at 
least, to be unconscious and instinctive with the Volkslied — "less adornment than 
necessity." 

How can it be instinctive? Would the poet at any time preface to his verses a 
reference to something which stood only in the vaguest sort of relationship to 
what followed, unless it were a mere understood convention that he should do so? 
Krejci believes he would, for 15 he endeavors to explain the lack of connection between 
the first and the second couplet of the well-known 

Dass 's im Wald finstr is, 

Das macht das Holz; 
Dass main Schaz saubr is, 

Des macht mi schtolz. 

by attributing it to the psychic mechanism underlying the uneducated mind, which 
finds its most conspicuous expression in just the lack of all logical connection, and 
which is a part of all the other vagueness and naivet6 of the Volkslied, This may be 
true in any one instance, or set of instances, but what shall we say when it is found 
that exactly this Ungereimtheit between nature-introduction and following verses is a 
stated convention in Schnaderhiipfel literature, from which Krecji quotes his illustra- 
tion? 16 Would it be advisable to believe that the psychic mechanism of the popular 
mind is such that it not only works vaguely, with rushes and starts, to which our mind 
cannot leap, but that it works constantly and consistently in a certain unswerving 
channel of stereotyped vagueness ? If the poet were to seek any nature-introduction 
at all, would he not naturally undertake something which was in close accord with his 
theme, which explained, paralleled, or expanded it ; in case, that is, he were free from 
conventional let or hindrance in the matter, and but following out his own compelling 
need? And is the "educated" mind so far beyond the view-point of the "popular" 
mind that it cannot understand in hundreds, or thousands, of instances the psychic 
mechanism of the latter? 

Surely it is not fair to feel that, so far as the song is the artistic effort of the 
individual author, he could ever have prefixed to the verses of his composing a refer- 
ence to nature "which stands in no close connection with what follows, but which 
lends a faint color to the whole song." Following the rule of his art, rather, as laid 
down for him in many a well-remembered song, he gave us an opening touch of 

13Uhland, loc. tit, p. 15. "At the first a nature-pic- 1* J. Grimm, Kleinere Schriften, Vol. IV, p. 218. 

tare at the top of the song, less adornment than necessity, 15 Zeitschrifl filr Volkerpsychologie, Vol. XIX (1889), p. 

may have been the indispensable support upon which the 135. 

following main thought leaned." 16 G. Meyee, Essays, Vol. I, p. 377. 

138 



Philip Schuilee Allen 



7 



nature, as naturally as did the majority of our novelists, until comparatively recently, 
devote a large part of their opening chapter to the limning of some natural scene, 
into which fine-writing they introduced in leisurely fashion the characters of the 
drama to be acted. 

This nature-introduction is, then, no embryonic beginning of that use of nature 
which at a later stage of development entered the fiber of the Volkslied, and 
offered a counterpart or foil to every possible human emotion; 17 it is rather the 
last remnant of what was originally the entirety of the song — the last shred of the 
nature-hymn. 

And the evolution of nature-sense from the simple to the complex — did such 
an evolution ever exist in point of fact? There is an interchange between intensive 
and extensive, but who shall say which of the two denominates a fuller life ? Does the 
pathetic fallacy mean a deeper use of human life in nature, or merely a wider use? 
From the beginning of Germanic life to the present, when did vivification have fullest 
expression ? In latter-day subordination of the natural world to the enlarged demands 
of the ego in poetic utterance, or in the beginnings, when man had no mirror for his 
indwelling self other than the inanimate world about him? If it has been rightly 
assumed that vivification, that natural reaction of man upon his environment, be the 
first way, or a first way, in which he can interpret himself at all, then we must 
acknowledge that nothing has been added to its primal power throughout the centuries. 
One cannot speak here in terms of Darwin, or Spencer, or Haeckel ; one can merely 
assert that, under whatever shifting variance of mood or condition, the core of the 
matter is the same, unchanging: vivification is as natural and as wide as the human 
breath. 

Suggestion is a higher art than detailed reference. The ability to sum up in 
a phrase what would otherwise require extended explanation is not primal, nor yet 
antique — it is modern. And surely as subtile an impressionism is contained in the 
delicate allusions to nature which meet us in twelfth-century Minnesang as the mind 
can well conceive. When fear of nature had died away, and such late love of nature 
had come to take its place that the poet need but hint at its humblest beauty or 
significance to put himself in thorough accord with his auditors — then we have 
proof of a long and thorough appreciation of the poetic symbolism in nature, which 
is no new thing and novel. It is a survival. 

>' Journal of Germanic Philology, Vol. Ill (1901), p. 44. 



139 



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Studies in Popular Poetry 



II 

OLD BALLADS NEWLY EXPOUNDED 
Lord Randal 

1. Oh, where have you been, Andrew my son? 

Oh, where have you been, my darling sweet one? — 
I've been to Pretty Polly's, mother: Make my bed soon, 
Refrain. — For I'm sick to my heart, and fain would lay down. 

2. What had you for supper, Andrew my son? 

What had you for supper, my darling sweet one? — 

Fried eels, and bread and butter, mother: Make my bed soon, — Ref. 

3. What kind of eels were they, Andrew my son? 

What kind of eels were they, my darling sweet one? — 

Striped backs and speckled bellies, mother: Make my bed soon, — Ref. 

4. Oh, you have been poisoned, Andrew my son. 

Oh, you have been poisoned, my darling sweet one. — 

With the fried eels, and bread and butter, mother: Make my bed soon, — Ref. 

5. What will to your father, Andrew my son? 

What will to your father, my darling sweet one? — 

My suit of new clothes, mother: Make my bed soon,- — Ref. 

6. What will to your brother, Andrew my son ? 

What will to your brother, my darling sweet one? — 

The pin in my bosom, mother: Make my bed soon, — Ref. 

7. What will to your sister, Andrew my son? 

What will to your sister, my darling sweet one? — 

The ring on my finger, mother: Make my bed soon, — Ref. 

8. What will to your sweetheart, Andrew my son? 

What will to your sweetheart, my darling sweet one? — 
Hell-fire and brimstone, mother: Make my bed soon, — Ref. 

9. What will to your mother, Andrew my son? 

What will to your mother, my darling sweet one ? — 

The gates of heaven opened wide, mother: Make my bed soon,— Ref. 

Loed Thomas and Fair Annet 

2. Come riddle me this, dear mother, he said, 
Come riddle this unto me; 
Whether I marry fair Ellenor, 
Or bring the brown girl home, home, home, 
Refrain. — Or bring the brown girl home. 

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Philip Sohutleb Allen 



9 



3. The brown girl she hath both money and land, 
Ellenor she hath none. — 

I '11 give you my blessing, my only one son, 

But bring me the brown girl home, home, home, — Ref. 

4. Lord Thomas he dressed himself in red, 
His merry men all in green; 

And ev'ry town that they rode through, 

They took him to be some king, king, king, — Ref. 

5. He rode till he came to fair Ellenor's gate, 
Then he the bell did ring; 

There was none so ready as fair Ellenor, 
To welcome Lord Thomas in, in, in, — Ref. 

6. What ails you, Lord Thomas, fair Ellenor cried, 
What ails you, Lord Thomas, cried she. — 

My mother she bids me the brown girl to wed, 
Or no blessing she gives to me, me, me,— Ref. 

11. Lady Ellenor dressed herself in pink, 
Her waiting-maids all in green; 

And ev'ry town that they rode through, 

They took her to be some queen, queen, queen, — Ref. 

12. She rode till she came to the castle gate, 
Then she the bell did ring; 

There was none so ready as Lord Thomas himself, 
To welcome fair Ellenor in, in, in, — Ref. 

15. The brown girl she had a little pen-knife, 
It was both sharp and small; 
She stuck it in fair Ellenor's side, 
And wounded her in the gall, gall, gall, — Ref. 

16, 17. What ails you, fair Ellenor? Lord Thomas he cried, 
What ails you, fair Ellenor? cried he; 
As he saw the blood flowing down, 

18. Lord Thomas he had a little broad sword, 
It was both sharp and small; 

He took it and cut off the brown girl's head, 
And dashed it against the wall, wall, wall, — Ref. 

19. Lord Thomas he had a little broad sword, 
It was both sharp and small; 

He stuck the hilt into the ground, 
And on it he did fall, fall, fall, — Ref. 

And that put an end to them all, all, all, 
And that put an end to them all. 

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Studies in Popular Poetry 



The two ballads printed above are variants of Lord Randal 18 and Lord Thomas 
and Fair Annet 19 They are from the recitation of Mrs. Eliza Andrus, of Schenectady, 
N. Y., and were learned by her from an elderly serving-maid in the year 1844, when 
in Bloomingdale, at that time a suburb of New York city (Seventy-second street). 
Two facts bespeak the value of these versions: (1) Mrs. Andrus had never seen either of 
the ballads in print; (2) she was not taught them, but learned them as a child from 
hearing the maid sing the"m when at work about the house. A third ballad (Barbara 
Allen) would not appear to warrant regiving, because it is practically identical with 
an old Wehman-broadside already sufficiently known. The ballads were all sung 
impartially to a rocking, mournful cadence, although Randal was sung to Mrs. Andrus 
in 1870 by an English girl of sixteen, set to a lively dance measure — the hero's name 
in this latter case being Jimmie Landon, an evident corruption. This raises the inter- 
esting question as to whether the first, and intrinsic, distinction between a somber ballad 
(Schauerromanze) and a "Bab" ballad be not, after all, a matter of tune, and not a matter 
of text. That is, would not the apostate mind but newly freed from a belief in the 
horrors of Scottish balladry find relief in jingling the tune, before it parodied the text ? 

For music lends not only color to a song ; it is a life-giving principle. How true 
this is may be seen by the new lease of life which was given the ballad in the early 
part of the eighteenth century, when music composers found settings for songs, 
hitherto of such difficulty that only trained singers could do them justice, now simple 
enough for the slightest talent in musical accompaniment. These simple settings 
applied to the older ballads, breathing a freshness which was but the resultant of the 
highest art, gained for them an undreamed-of popularity. 

Music re-edits a ballad. It unites with the increasing importance of the time con- 
sideration in modern life to lop off ruthlessly the epic breadth of detail which had become 
incrusted on the ballad, as it ceased to be a dramatic recitative and became through the 
barren art of the bench-singers at the fairs a most prosaic chap-book history. When 
mumbled chanting has been laid aside, and the individuality of the musical performer 
begins to assert itself, the original demand of the first foresinger of the ballad becomes 
again compelling, which is that the story fail not of its highest effect upon its auditors. 

To this end, as the lyric elements come again to ascendency in the ballad, every- 
thing not absolutely necessary to the structure of the moment under description falls 
away as dross. As the compass of the song is narrowed, the root-situation is more 
vividly contemplated, the emotional stress is deepened, and the story of it has been 
reclaimed from the spurious detail which enveloped and threatened to choke it. 

A sprightliness results, a laconicism, an omission of middle-terms ; the story is 
suggested, not told. It is the suppression in Randal and Edward that strikes deep; 
it is what is not written of the first love between Thomas and Ellenor that arouses 
pity — all is impressionistic, not expressionistic. 

The above version of Lord Randal agrees with six versions as printed by Child, 

18 Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 12. i» Ibid., No. 73 D. 

142 



Philip Schutlee Allen 



11 



A, B, D, F, H, Ic, in that it contains a stanza expressing the fact that the son is 
poisoned, while this is merely implied in Child's C, E, G-, la, lb, Id, Ie, If, Ig, J, Ka, 
Kb, Kc, L, M, N, O. It might be argued that, as most of these versions are evidently 
cradle-songs, it was often found necessary to explain to the inquiring mind of the 
listening child that eels with striped backs and speckled bellies were snakes, and that 
snakes were poison; but it is curious to note that, with a single exception, Ic, just 
those versions, I-O, which are the most clearly intended for little children omit any 
mention of the word " poison." Seventeen versions are thus found to omit the word 
"poison," six to contain it. Yes — it may be objected — but full nineteen of the versions, 
A, C, D, E, Ia-Ig, J, Ka-Kc, L-O, contain stanzas which show the eels (fish) were no 
true eels, in that they either (1) were gathered on the land close by, or (2) killed the 
dogs (hawks) that got the leavings. This is another matter, for the poison is still only 
implied, although, by the plodding figure of climactic repetition common to all popular 
poetry, every possibility that it is not poison may be removed. 

Lord Randal, in the above version, falls into two integral parts. The last five 
stanzas relating to the will and testament 20 may be and are attached to any number of 
ballads which deal with the death of their chief actor. They are, too, implicatory of 
certain death, which is ordinarily not expressly stated. The first three stanzas are the 
other whole, and as such are perhaps originally sprung from a riddle: "What kind of 
eels grows on land?" or, "What snakes are without poison?" — "A man ate snakes 
(eels) and lived," or, "A man ate eels (snakes) and died." Add to such statement the near 
query: "Who would give a man such eels?" and the consequent thought is at hand: 
"An adulterous mother, a spiteful step-mother [grandmother must be a mere corruption, 
except as it connotes granny, hag, witch, crone] , or a faithless sweetheart." Out of such 
simples may a ballad be made. But the fourth stanza is of neither first nor second 
part ; it is an interpolation ; it expresses what needs no expression ; it undoes all that 
precedes it. In three versions (Child F, H ; Pound, Modem Language Notes, Vol. 
XVII, 1902, p. 13) it has crept destructively into the preceding stanza, and in one 
place (Child H) it has blurred everything: 

A cup of strong poison; 
I fear you are poisoned, 
I fear you are poisoned, 
O yes, I am poisoned. 

When explication enters the ballad and implication dies out of the ballad, what is left 
is apt to run like the above. It is then good that we can say, seventeen of Child's 
variants omit poison, while only six contain it. A pity that in Miss Pound's version, 
as in the above, two more examples of the corrupted sort are added ! 

Our version of Lord Thomas and Fair Annet is shorter by some eight stanzas 
than any of the variants of Child's D, to which type it belongs. The American 



«u Guild, Vol. I, pp. 143, 144. 



»> Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. VII, p. 33; Cuild, Vol. VI, p. 509. 

143 



12 



Studies in Popular Poetey 



version printed by Babbitt 21 has likewise eighteen stanzas — compare the variants of 
Tolman. Where any of these variants lack stanzas which are in the type D, as Df-Di, 
these same stanzas are lacking in our version, which for the sake of convenience may 
be termed Dx ; with a single exception, Di, in which the stanza corresponding to the 
fourth in Dx has fallen out. That is, out of ten ballads like Dx which have been noted 
by Child, only one lacks a stanza which Dx has ; otherwise Dx is in every case more 
condensed in every part than any one of Child's ten — D, Da-Di. By comparing the 
stanza-numbers of Dx with those of Child D, it will be seen that they are practically 
identical, except that Dx lacks stanzas 1, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14 of D, while stanzas 16, 
17 of D are summed up in one deponent stanza in Dx. 

Now, whatever be the comparative artistic merits of D and Dx (and I can imagine 
none so purblind as not to vastly prefer D), the truth would seem to remain that Dxis 
closer to the original condition of the ballad than is D. Dx contains the whole story 
without comment or omission: A swain loves two women, one of whom has lands 
(cattle), the other nothing. He marries the girl with lands, and the rejected mistress 
is stabbed by the wife. (Compare the amusing perversions of Babbitt and Tolman 
ballads.) The maddened husband kills his wife and then himself. D adds touches of 
beauty to the narrative; motivates it, however, not one whit beyond Dx. The first 
stanza of D is unnecessary; the longest of the other kindred ballads, A-C, E-H, are 
without the introductory verses, although H has no less than forty-one extant stanzas. 
Stanzas 7-10 of D deal with Elinor's compunctions about going to the wedding ; they 
enhance the art-merit of the ballad, but retard its action, as the outcome is foregone. 
Stanzas 13, 14 of D describe in what way the wife is exasperated, by the taunt of 
Elinor (13) and the answering love of Thomas (14) ; but they are not required to 
explain the jealousy of the brown girl. 

A further comparison of the other Lord Thomas ballads in Child with D will 
show that the latter is the most condensed of all, A-C, E-H. D leaves out much 
repetition: asking advice in turn of father, mother, sister, brother; discussion of 
Annet's (Elinor's) family, father, mother, brothers; description of the smiths, tailors, 
maidens, who got the girl largely ready for witnessing the wedding ; an account of the 
bickering between bride and mistress ; a narrative of the double burial of Thomas and 
Annet, with the attendant ritual and the resultant birk and briar twining their branches 
over the graves of the lovers. D has rid itself of at least twenty such explicatory and 
swelling stanzas ; Dx has shown the possibility of the story with eight or nine stanzas 
less than D, and yet without an over-pruning. 

If, then, Dx be really not an older form than Child D, Da-Di, it is yet a more 
original form, judged by the tenets regarding the early balladry. Music has re-edited 
it in this case, for it is more effective as a song of eleven stanzas than ever it could 
have been as a declamation of not less than forty -one. And what is a song of forty- 
one quatrains but a declamation, no matter if it be sing-sung? Dx, in short, has 
become less epic and more lyric. 

144 



Philip Sohutleb Allen 



13 



III 

HEINE AND THE " SCHNADERHtPFEL " 

Every investigator of Heine's lyric poetry, from the first to the last (Matthew 
20 : 16 : For many be called, but few chosen), has occupied himself somewhat with the 
debt which it evidently owes to the Volkslied, for the correspondence between Heine's 
technique and that of German popular poetry is too close to permit of either denial or 
of oversight. Two special investigations of this correspondence have appeared (Greinz, 
H. Heine und das deutsche Volkslied, 1894, and Goetze, H. Heine's " Buch der 
Lieder" und sein Verhdltnis zum deutschen Volkslied, 1895), not to speak of shorter 
articles, such as Hessel's suggestive "Heinrich Heine und das deutsche Volkslied" 
(Kolner Zeitung, February 22, 1887). And yet it would seem that little or nothing 
has been said in the matter of Heine's most important getting from the storehouse of 
popular song : I mean, of course, his broad use of that ironical antithesis (Stimmungs- 
brechung) which has caused him more misunderstanding than all his published cyni- 
cisms, and has ever proven such a stone for stumbling to appreciative criticism of his 
life and works. 

Goetze closes a detailed study of Heine's debt to the popular poetry in the follow- 
ing words : 

Heine gave, as we have seen, a popular dress to his songs, and borrowed many a poetic 
theme from the Volkslied; but his originality did not suffer the least in this. For there is 
never visible a slavish dependence upon his model, but rather in many an instance a further 
development of the seed which he has taken in. And finally Heine owes his popularity to just 
this circumstance, that, following the suggestions which had been given by Herder and Goethe, 
he went back to the real poetry of the Volkslied, to the same root from which the Heiderdslein, 
that precious flower of the German lyric, had sprouted." 

No account is here taken of ironical antithesis as a possible borrowing from the popu- 
lar ; in fact, in another place of the same study (p. 4) Goetze characterizes it as a dis- 
tinct going beyond the simple nature-treatment of the Volkslied. 23 

Walzel has, to be sure, called attention in his review of Legras's Henri Heine 24, to 
the fact that there exists an intrinsic connection between Heine's Stimmungsbrechung 
and the ironic quatrains of the Schnaderhiipfel, but his words are, whether designedly 
or no, most prophetically vague: "Nor do I intend to make clear," he writes, "just 
how I conceive the origin of this form which Heine held so dear, and would therefore 
only refer in passing to the ironic songs of the Alpine countries, for these affix to an 
appreciative nature-introduction a coarse and sarcastic bit of obscenity." This state- 
ment seems to me oddly guarded in tone and expression for one who has come so near 
the truth as Walzel. 

M Loc. cit., p. 47. compare Seeliq, Die dichterische Sprache in Heine'i Buch 

" For a list of snch antitheses with similar comment, der Lieder (1891), pp. 70 f. 

KEuphorion, Vol. V (1898), p. 151. 

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Studies in Popular Poetry 



Personally, I conceive the matter most concretely. I have ever agreed with 
Nollen 25 that Heine owed more to Wilhelm Miiller than is commonly considered to be 
the case, despite the now famous letter of June 7, 1826; but I think that Heine's 
greatest debt to Muller lies not in borrowed cadences and meters; for this is, 
after all, a matter of externality, and, overwhelming as is the long list of correspond- 
ences cited to Milller's advantage by Nollen, 26 he has therein taken up dozens of 
coincidences weighed by Hessel 27 and myself, 28 and adjudged too inconclusive to war- 
rant mention. Not in these matters of meter and trick of speech, then, but in that 
Muller first called Heine's attention to the art-value of the Schnaderhiipfel, with 
its quick turnings from simple ideality to cynical materialism — therein lies the 
ineffaceable debt. 

Nor can we quite arrive at the real meaning of the Schnaderhiipfel by a study of 
the printed collections, for these are ordinarily required to lay aside their most stinging 
and clutching ribaldries, out of regard for polite convention. It seems odd that an age 
which puts its imprint on so many traditional obscenities can offer no unglossed edition 
of the age-old Schnaderhiipfel. 29 For an inherent difference between the lyric-epic 
Volkslied and the epigrammatic Gestanzel is found in just this matter of unchastity. 
" The songs of the troopers and the clerks," says Mullenhoff, 30 " are not always the most 
decent, and there exist rimes for the rabble, too, written in the manner of the Volkslied 
— often to parody it. It would be absurd, however, to judge the latter's worth from a 
depraved example. The true Volkslied is chaste, unaffected, and never common or 
low. No sadder misconception is possible than to assign to it all the prosaic songs 
which are written in the language of the people." Likewise Wackernell 31 speaks of 
the modesty and chastity with which the Volkslied deals with the most suggestive 
material, where art-poets are not disinclined to paint with a broad brush, beneath a 
transparent veil. These words are true, in so far as they concern the narrative popular 
song, but this is as different from the caustic Schnaderhiipfel as the song of a lark is 
from the sting of a bee. There is, however, impurity for the sake of impurity in much 
attempted epigram of the popular sort - — the notorious Clara Hatzlerin couplets, for 
instance — but it may be safely assumed that, although one meets such poverty of wit 
in manuscripts and books which note the prevailing fashions of their moment, it is not 
handed down in the inherited stock of the Gestanzeln which are based upon oral 
transmission ; for pure dirt never lives. 

25 Modem Language Notes, Vol. XVII (1902), pp. 104 f. 
KLoc.cit., pp. 262-75. 

5' Zeitschrift fiir den deutschenUnterricht,\ol. Ill (1889), 
pp. 59, 60. 

3> Journal of Germanic Philology, Vol. Ill (1901), p. 35 ae. 

29 In this connection attention may be called to the 
pervasive American limerick, which in our own time sums 
up so neatly in its four-versed doggerel many an absurdity 
and abuse of our modern life, and which, nevertheless, 
because of its indecency of expression, never sees the light 
of print. The name " limerick " is lacking in the Century 
Dictionary, and yet it is in common use as applied to the 

146 



inimitable epigrams which may be heard exchanged among 
care-free persons, until score upon score have been given. 
The simplicity of the cadence-structure fairly invites to 
improvisation, and new limericks are born as surely as old 
limericks are sung. The melody to which they are sung 
rarely varies, and the three-beat measure is maintained 
with a consequent rigor — the form becoming as stereotyped 
as that of a triolet or a sonnet. 

30 Sagen, Marchen und Lieder der Herzogthiimer Schles- 
wig, Holstein und Lauenburg (1845), p. xxvi. 

31 Das deutsche Volkslied, p. 21. 



Philip Schuyler Allen 



15 



Every race possesses a popular literature whose spirit is a scurrilous wit : the 
people's songs and tales are as racy as they are racial, before they have been expunged 
and prepared for parlor-presentation. In the astounding abundance of the facetiae, 
the fabliaux, the Schwdnke of the past centuries we do not need to read degeneracy — 
no matter how they offend today. Such rank growth betokens rather a virility beyond 
that of any modern form of " polite " literature. The one element in the age-long 
history of literature which has remained immutable amid all the eddying and shifting 
currents of change is this same scurrilous wit. From the tales of the unknown monk 
of St. G-all to the Schwdnke and Schnurren of the German prentice of today, there 
is a coherence and identity, brought about by the presence of this unvarying situation- 
humor, which is beyond any that is maintained by polished literature. From the 
earliest winileodos (= Gestanzeln) of the Carlovingian nunneries to the last lyric- 
epigram of the Austrian peasant, there has been no permutation in this teasing, 
plaguing, tormenting, stinging, coarse-fibered wit. 

A strange endurance ! Nature for the very sake of nature. The rich soil in 
which the brighest and the fairest expressions of a people's fancy find their roots. Not 
sensual — this coarse-fibered wit — but materialistic, viewing man frankly as an object 
among objects in the visible universe, as a product of nature like the plants and the 
animals. The coarsest of the popular dance-rimes have been stamped Schhimperlieder. 
Little deserving the bitter characterization of Hofmann, which has found but too ready 
belief : 32 "Ungainly street-ballads, for the most part furnished over-richly with inde- 
cencies or consisting of coarseness, comprise the larger portion of these vagabond 
songs. "Wit scarce lends them a propitiatory coloring, and they are heard but rarely 
at the dance or the drinking table, almost never in social gathering or under the 
village linden." Here again the mistake is made of attempting to separate, along 
the lines of modern social usage, the impure from the pure, for the same distin- 
guished investigator, who has done so much to attain recognition for the Schnader- 
hiipfel, says of the same dance-couplets, after they have been washed free of their 
dross (!): 33 "The Schnaderhuj)fel\s one of the most charming phenomena of folk- 
poetry, the worthiest parallel to the Mdrchen of the German North ; both belong to 
the best that dialect-literature has to offer us." Schlumperlied — ungainly, coarse ; 
Schnaderhttpfel = charming. And still it is just the outcast coarse-song, outside the 
realm of print, which has ever fulfilled the demand made of all naive utterance, that it 
live entirely by oral transmission. Outside of convention, likewise, and so alive in 
the hidden corners of a nation's consciousness, together with many another shy 
remnant of old tradition and superstition. 

Now, the justification of many a thing in life may be apparent, while its justifi- 
cation in an art which strives to represent life in its ideal relationships may be 
doubted. There are thus many prosaic and questionable employments in our environ- 
ment of the workday week which would lend themselves but ill to poetic mirroring. 

Koborghcr (JuackbrUnnla (lSoi), p. xxvi. M Frommanns Zcitschri/t fiXr ih utschc Mundarten, Vol. Ill, i>. 1M. 

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Studies in Popular Poetry 



It is the physician and not the poet before whom every human recess is opened. 
How, then, can references which seem better fitted to an anatomical chart than they do 
to a page of polite literature be employed at all in poetic art ? 

The strongest instrument at the disposal of the rhetorician or the orator, the 
historian or the satirist, if he be but sparing in its usage, is antithesis. Nothing 
stands out so clearly before us as when it is confronted by its opposite — convention 
never slackens its hold on us till exposed by nature. 

No art-form has been so built upon by convention as that of the love-lyric. This seems 
a paradox, that just the expression which is considered to be the most immediate outpour- 
ing of the most essential emotion should be the most stilted. And yet such is the case. 

In der heroischen Zeit, 
Da Gotter und Gottinnen liebten, 
Folgte Begierde dem Blick, 
Folgte Genuss der Begier. 

Satiety would then have been the only possible basis of an early love-lyric — and this 
were naturally impossible. But when, under convention, the sexes were segregated, 
and the formulae of religion and etiquette built up castle walls between them ; when 
natural selection was hindered in a hundred and then in a thousand ways ; when the 
human rutting season died away until it found but a final and pale reflex in the sighing 
ardor which the knight entertained for his mistress — then all the coquetries and 
whimsies of an artificial love came to find expression in the Minnedienst and Minnesang 
of the Middle Age. 

As art poetry grew away from people's poetry in the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries, or as they drew near to each other again in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries, they yet were never melted the one into positive identity with the other. 
They grew richer or poorer in imagery and technique, more or less idealistic in 
expression ; and yet they remained till the time of Goethe ever the mouthpiece of two 
different worlds. If the class separated itself from the mass in social life, then a class 
poetry separated itself sharply from a poetry which the mass loved — and this 
distinction grew vague when the distinctions in social life grew vague. But with 
Goethe came the beginning of a new order of things. Following out the Rousseau- 
Herder theory that man was at heart the same, no matter how he be covered over by 
the thin glaze of conventional life, he wrote poetry which would be the expression of 
this common heart of man, the most ignorant and the most cultured. And still, 
despite the songs of Goethe, which have become real people's songs, in that they reach 
the heart of a whole people, other poetry of his is again burdened with the thought 
and the philosophy of an acquired culture and world-experience far removed from the 
simplicity of the mass. Simple poetry, then, can go and does go to all hearts ; com- 
plex poetry can go only to the heart which has been controlled and dominated by a 
deep intellectual experience. Artistic poetry and nature poetry can never fuse in all 
parts of their being. 

148 



Philip Schuyleb Allen 



17 



It is commonly held, I take it, that Heine never found as full vent for the real 
experiences of his life as Goethe did. His published pieces would then ordinarily 
breathe a greater objectivity than Goethe's. At the same time, he was more concerned 
than Goethe ever was to give color of popularity to all that he wrote. Absolute 
monosyllabic simplicity of external form is therefore a leading attribute of Heine's 
verses. Studying the Volkslied, as did all the romanticists, he took over, as has been 
sufficiently proved, all the major matters of its technique — its concreteness, its figu- 
rative structure, its omission of detail, its prattling rhetoric, its simplicity of meter and 
guise. Scarce a phenomenon of its homespun demeanor escaped him ; and in this 
direction Goethe, Brentano, and Muller taught him much. 

But his figure of ironical antithesis ? This figure, which he used so largely, has 
been deemed a thing apart from the Volkslied technique, and has been accounted for 
in Heine by the two following premises: First, "Heine was a romanticist, a pupil of 
Brentano, and as such made large use of poetic irony." 34 Secondly, " Heine but pictures 
the struggle going on within his own breast. His bitterness against a society which 
was intolerant of Judaism; 35 his failure with Amalie and Therese; difficulties with his 
uncle; exile in Paris; terrible years of spinal affliction; etc." 36 



3* Elsteb (Heinrich Heines samtliche Werke, Vol. I, 
p. 62) says: " This mockery occurs especially at the end of 
such poems as have a serious beginning. The much dis- 
cussed ironical endings of these songs were not introduced 
by Heine into his lyrics without malice prepense. As he has 
already found a means of avoiding the appearance of over- 
exuberant sentimentality, by the interspersing among his 
real lyrics of songs devoted to a sensual love, so he now dis- 
covers another means in these conscious destructions of the 
illusion. Footing upon the celebrated romantic irony, he 
was at pains to show that he too, the passionately aroused 
lyricist, was superior to his material — he wished to provide 
himself with an antidote against the all too strong emo- 
tional excitement which frequently threatened to over- 
whelm him. Thus, by this innovation, did he make it clear 
that he was striving after the uttermost truth, for it is an 
established psychological fact that an emotion which has 
found too free a vent begins to veer suddenly towards the 
diametrically opposed pole of feeling. And yet this ironic 
decomposition of true emotion is at times nothing more 
than a shamed hesitancy on Heine's part to expose the 
true impulse of the soul ; and in isolated instances this 
irony may be recognized as but the shrill laughter of utter 
despair." 

Walzel (loc. cit., p. 151) likewise finds the beginnings of 
the ironic antithesis of Heine in romantic irony. "Thoro 
was romantic irony before Heino; this romantic irony do- 
lighted to bring into glaring contrast on tho one hand tho 
conventional expression of emotion and coarso realism, on 
tho other hand fantastic-transcendental fooling and tho 
straitening forms of social convention. Brentano, that 
romanticist who was most congonial to Heino as man and 
as thinker, found pleasuro in this form, and Hoiuo him- 
self, as his Fiomantische dchulc sufficiently proves [by tho 
way, it proves no such thing], was woll enough awaro of 
this fact. With thoso premises can it bo longor questioned 
that Uoino moroly wont on to develop a stylo-motivo 



which he had got from romanticism and Brentano? And 
further, that the new thing in Heine's utilization did not 
lie in the motive itself, but only in the manner of its employ- 
ment? Literary history does not doubt for a moment that 
something new is here, for the romantic use of ironic anti- 
thesis had not hitherto dared to the boldness of Tannhauser 
and the winter's tale, Deutschland." 

35 Which is unfortunately so intolerant of Judaism 
today that the strange statement can bo made by Bartels 
in his two-volume literary history, "written to strengthen 
the pride in our Germany nationality and to quicken the 
national conscience," that Heine is not a German poet, but 
a Jew poet who used the German language (Bartels, 
Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur, Vol. II, pp. 211, 311). 
People read and believe such criticisms of Heine today ; 
anti-Semitism is carried into literary history. 

36 Legeas (loc. cit., p. 116) says, while discussing the 
famous but futile comparison of W. Scheror's, of Brentano 
and Heine : " Brentano had the bad taste to close very 
serious narrations with clownish exclamations, such as, 
" Do you know, I'm hungry I " or " Aren't thoy geese, these 
girls, I swear they've believed me I" and tho attempt is 
made to trace hither the source of the dissonances which 
mar the most tender songs of Heino. Bosidos, if one wishes 
to maintain that Heine consciously imitated tho procedure 
just described in Brentano, it is then necessary to admit 
that he was by nature disposed to buCToonory: an evident 
circle in reasoning. I would, moreover, add, it is little 
likely that our poet spoiled out of pure caprice, by a brutal 
word or an ironic oxclamation, tho mood produced by his 
poems. If it be insistod that ho was a poot occupied 
sololy with effoct, ono must simply admit that, with no 
bettor reason, ho destroyed tho effect ho had produced ; if 
his aim was only to please, ho would havo listened at least 
to his critics, nnd havo oxcisod from a second edition of 
his poems thoso passages in tho first which had boon badly 
received. Ho did not do this — it sooms that tho ironic 



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Studies in Popular Poetry 



Now, these and. other like reasons, discovered and undiscovered by critics, may 
have influenced Heine in part or largely to make so overwhelming a use of ironic 
antithesis ; but even then the question still remains unsolved : Where did he find his 
model ? For, search as one will in romanticism before Heine, no like Stimmungs- 
brechung can be found. A most casual reading of Brentano's lyrics and ballads will 
dispel utterly the theory that Heine found it there, and the statement remains, as many 
others do in literary criticism, because none takes the trouble to investigate the 
matter. But if one does trouble to investigate the Schnaderhiipfel, there are at once 
at hand hundreds of analogies to Heine's usage, too close for mistaking. 37 

Before going farther, however, it will be best to clear away a misunderstanding, 
which seems all too common, as to just what Heine's ironical antithesis really is. I 
conceive it, briefly, to be this: Heine brings before our eyes a situation which interests 
us, and makes an appeal upon our sympathy, to induce within us a certain mood. 
While we still fancy ourselves secure in the assurance that the situation will resolve 
itself according to conventional method, we are suddenly confronted, as by lightning 
from a clear sky, with an irony which for the moment bids fair to destroy all the 
beauty of description which has been slowly unfolded before us, and which gives us a 
shock of undeniable surprise — which almost makes us catch our breath. Whether 
this ironic antithesis find expression in but a verse at the end of a short song, or 
whether it include a whole canto of stanzas, its aim and its effect are one and the same. 
This identity of figure is often not recognized, for Legras, 38 like many another, strives 
to set up a specious distinguendum between Heine's irony as it occurs in his shorter 
lyrics and Heine's irony as it occurs in the longer pieces, Tannhduser, Atta Troll, 
Deutschland. He bases this distinction, as Hofmann did his between the Schlum- 
perlied and the Schnaderhiipfel, on the extremely subjective decision as to obscene or 
not obscene. A great difference does exist, of course, between moral and immoral in 
the social world, the political world, and, if you wish, in the art-world ; but how ironic 

antithesis translated faithfully for him the struggle which of Heine's writings has ever produced so brutal a decep- 

his own heart was undergoing. Brentano may have -been tion as has the end of Deutschland, The passages where 

able to help him out now and then with a useful or piquant the bawds of Hamburg parade are sufficiently empty and 

example; but he did not serve him as master." uninteresting; but anger, almost, takes hold on one when 

37 In the light of such close analogies, Scherer's state- running through for the first time those chapters smeared 
ment is too general to be of any service (History of German with an ineffectual ordure, in which the goddess ;Ham- 
Literature, New York, 1886, Vol. II, p. 279) : " Heine was monia appears. How could Heine dare to print his scata- 
only pursuing [in this ironic antithesis] to its last results logical allusions under the protection of Moliere? How 
a principle of romanticism which had originated in the could he not understand that a vulgar object is never 
previous century. Since Addison and others, Socrates had comic except in the proper situation? What is there left 
been an ideal of European authors, and Socratic irony an to be said, when Heine describes the privy-chair of Charles 
object of their aspiration. Friedrich Schlegel discovered the Great? Ordure is as much out of place here as it is 
irony in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and demanded irony of repugnant ; it does not add one iota of comedy to the poet's 
every perfect poet ; this irony he sometimes defined as theme, which it but halts profitlessly at these dirty objects, 
analogous to the Socratic mingling of jest and earnest, This whole ending of the poem recalls to us sadly what a 
sometimes as a ' constant self-parody,' sometimes as a low environment inclosed Heine at this time. Unhesitant, 
'transcendental buffoonery,' sometimes as 'the clear con- with a sort of senile satisfaction, he ends that one of his 
sciousness which abides amid the perpetual flux of ever- works which might, perhaps, have been the fullest and the 
brimming chaos.' " This is true, but then it is also true most eloquent, with a kennel-like description of a girl in 
that the Schnaderhiipfel is Socratic, and so, it may be said, the low districts of Altona, and with a pun on the word 
is life in general, for it mixes jest and earnest most sadly. ' chair.' Ah, how Mathilde will laugh when her husband 

38 " I do not believe," says Legras (p. 290), " that another tells her such sood jokes I " 

160 



Philip Sohutleb Allen 



19 



antithesis can be more or less ironic, or more or less antithetic, according as it hap- 
pens to be less or more dirty, it is hard to understand. 

We have seen above how carefully Heine copied the Volkslied. We have his 
own words as to the "epigrammatic ending" of the ScJmaderhiipfel, and its influence 
upon him: "While at work on the little songs [of the Lyric Intermezzo]," he writes 
to Maximilian Schottky, on the fourth of May, 1823, " your short Austrian dance-rimes 
with their epigrammatic endings have often hovered before me." It may be well to 
print below a score of the dance-rimes from this epoch-making book 39 which contains 
the ironic antithesis so close to Heine's. More of the quatrains might have been chosen 
to advantage, were it necessary to add to the list ; other larger collections, such as 
Dunger's Eundds und Reimspriiche aus dem Vogtlande (1876) ; Hermann's Schnada- 
hiipfeln aus den Alpen, 3d ed. (1894); Greinz-Kapferer, Tiroler Schnadahiipfeln und 
Volkslieder, 4 vols. (1890-93), may be well consulted for a wider development of the 
teasing, ironic theme-treatment so common to Muller and Heine. But the undeniable 
base is in these sequent stanzas, ab omni obscoenitate purgatis, to be sure, and yet 
brimful of the bitter-sweet of Heine's constant manner. 



Nuss af d' Nacht, Nuss af d' Nacht 
Had ma main Vada bracht, 

Had ma s' geb'n mit da Faust, 
Dass ma da Kopf had g'saus't. 



Af 'n Afiga bin i gafiga 
Hab a Schlaghais'l g'richt; 

An'n Buam hab i g'fafiga, 
Und des Ding had mi gift! 

Wann daifi Hea r z a so trai wa r , 
Und so woah r wa r , wia das main, 

So miasst hald daifi Schwesta 
Main Schwagarin saifi. 



Maifi Hea r z is vofi Siilba, 

Und dain's is vofi Gold, 
Und daifi Africhtikaid 

Had da Daifi schofi g'hollt. 

Und du, maifi liabi Lena, 

D' Safid'l is schena, 
Wann s' ah koan'n Zahfid nid had - 

Kif'ln k&nn s' ja den&! 



I wollt, i war im Himm'l 
Und lag im Bet und schliaf, 

Und wa r mid Krapf'n zuadekt, 
Da ass i vofi da Ziach ! 



Schwoa 1- zaugad muasst sain, 

Wannst maifi Dia r nd'l wullst saifi, 

Und schefi hach voa r da Brast, 
So had da Daub'r a Lust. 



God mid Hea r , 

Gib ma, w&s i begeah r ; 

1 begeah r j& nid viil, 
Nua r des — w&s i wull ! 



O, du hea r zigi Xannerl, 
Haifit hab i an'n Rausch, 

I tat di gea r n h&ls'n, 
Ab'r i kenn mi nid aus. 



Dass d' just nid goa r sauba bist, 

Des s&g i nid; 
W&nnst ab'r a weng hibscha \va r st, 

Schad'n tat' s da nid. 



Und 's Diarnd'l had g's&gt: 
s' wa r 's Fensterl vafroa r 'n; 

Wiii da rechti Bua is kemma, 
Is 's glai afg'laifit woar'n. 

Im Bach'l fliiisst a WSsserl, 

Das W&sserl macht Ais — 
Wann a schen's Di<i r nd'l a Jufigfa wa r 

Des \va r was nai's! 



wZiska cnd ScnoTTKT, Osterreichincht Volktlicder, Posth, 1819. 

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Studies in Popular Poetry 



Was hast denn du gess'n, 
Dass di goar a so dua r scht ? — 

Bairn Amtman an'n Griill'n 
Und a Fledamauswua r scht ! 



An'n Ros'nkrafiz liass i ma mach'n, 
Von lauta Muschkatnuss — 

Tat s' in 's Biar aini schab'n, 
Wan mi 's Bet'n vadruss! 



Und wannst mi nid liab'n wiillst, 
So lasst d' es hald blaib'n; 

Main Hand had via r Finga, — 
Da Dam zoagt da d' Faig'n. 

Dea r Bua, dear eah r li defikt, 
Und dea r hald niks vaschefikt, 

Dea r wia r d nid g'estimia r t, 
Nua r brav sekia't! 



Wann i ah so schefi wa r , 
lis wia d' Lafidlamenscha, 

So tat i main Schenhaid 
Voa r 's Fensta hefiga; 

Main Schenhaid voa r 's Fensta, 
Main Traihaid voa r de Dia r , 

Geh aina, main Hanns'l, 
Und sez di zu mia r ! 



Denn 's Oafisidla Leb'n 
Des is ma nid geb'n, 

I mecht ja viil liaba 
A Zwoasid'la wea r 'n. 



Ai, du main himmlischa Vada, 
Schik ma do amal an'n Man; 

Had an iad's Kaz'l iah r n Kada, 
Und an iad's Hend'l sain'n Hahfi! 



Dea r Bua, dear is a Noa r , 

Dea r das Ding tuat — 
Dea r sain'm Dia r nd'l d' Nas'n aschnaid't 

Und schtekt s' af'n Huad! 



A Kapuzina mecht i wea r 'n, 
Nacha bauat i m'r a Z6ld, 

Dass i God kinnt recht diana, 
Und frumm leb'n af da Wold. 



Das oafi Bea r gerl affi, 

Das afidri hina — 
Geh, laich ma dam Dia r nd'l, 

Das main is nid da ! 

's Dia r nd'l auslaich'n 
Des wa r ma schofi. recht! 

Du kinnt'st ma 's vawiast'n, 
Dass i 's nimma mecht. 

Und wannst af dam Dia r nd'l 
So hoagli whilst sain, 

So kaf d'r a Babia r 'l 
Und wik'l da 's drain. 

Und so leg 's in a Kist'l, 

Und nag'l da 's zua, 
Und so kimmt da koan afidara 

Wiksa dazua. 



It is scarce necessary, perhaps, to cite examples of ironic antithesis from Heine, 
so well known are they all ; but it may be permitted, as it will aid much in graphic 
presentation. First of all, then, come the paradigms, of which criticism maintains 
that they grow naturally from the poet's mood of despair. If they do — and this is 
granted for the argument — why did Heine turn to just this expression to depict his 
despair (Groethe, Schiller, Uhland, Eichendorff, Muller made small or no use of it)? 
And if he did turn to this figure, where did he find it in precedent literature? 

Ich, ein solcher Narr, ich liebe Es ziehen die brausenden Wellen 

Wieder ohne Gegenli'ebe! Wohl nach dem Strand; 

Sonne, Mond und Sterne lachen, Sie schwellen und zerschellen 

Und ich lache mit — und sterbe. Wohl auf dem Sand. 



Es ist eine alte Geschichte, 
Doch bleibt sie immer neu; 

Und wem sie just passieret, 
Dem bricht das Herz entzwei. 



Sie kommen gross und kraftig, 

Ohn' Unterlass; 
Sie werden endlich hef tig — 

Was hilft uns das? 



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Er spielt mit seiner Flinte, 

Die funkelt im Somienrot, 
Er prasentiert und schultert — 

Ich wollt', er schosse mich tot. 

Nur einmal noch mocht' ich dich sehen 
Und sinken vor dir aufs Knie, 

Und sterbend zu dir sprechen: 
Madame, ich liebe Sie ! 



Die Nachtigallen singen 
Herab aus der laubigen Hoh', 

Die weissen Lammer springen 
Im weichen, griinen Klee. 

Ich kann nicht singen und springen, 

Ich liege krank im Gras; 
Ich hore femes Klingen, 

Mir traumt, ich weiss nicht was. 



Die Welt ist so schon und der Himmel so blau, 
Und die Liifte, die wehen so lind und so lau, 
Und die Blumen winken auf bluhender Au', 
Und funkeln und glitzern im Morgentau, 
Und die Menschen jubeln, wohin ich schau' — 
Und doch mocht' ich im Grabe liegen, 
Und mich an ein totes Liebchen schmiegen. 

Also L. I., 14-30-51; Heimh, 6-19; N. F., 40. 

Whatever may be said of the verses just quoted, however, they may be supposed 
to sum up fairly well those instances of antithesis in Heine where "one hears the shrill 
laughter of utter despair." The other Stimmungsbrechungen have a much more objective 
appearance. Here is one instance, with a well-known parody which it suggests: 

Das war eine wilde Wirthschaf t ! Mei Herzl is klein, 

Kriegsvolk und Landesplag' ! 's kann niemand hinein, 

Sogar in deinem Herzchen Als die ganze Kasern' 

Viel Einquartierung lag. Und noch a paar Herrn . 

And so with many another case of Heinesque irony, as we pass his songs in review 
before us — the quick changing from sweet to bitter, the absolute disregard for con- 
ventional poetic usage, the childlike, at times fairly childish, delight in saying the 
wrong thing at the right time, together with the inimitable mockery of the child 
and the glee with which he brings down with one fell swoop the beautiful 
card-structure he has reared before us — we have entered the play-realm of the 
Schnaderhupfel, where a quick rime or a telling bit of wit suffices unto itself, and 
never has to answer for the results of its flashing nonsense and shallow cynicism. 
Legras will have it that Heine is " as spiteful as an oriental, as spiteful as Jehovah "(!) 
in his irony, thus making capital of his Judaic origin — and criticism today, when 
confronted with the playful venom of Deuischland, denominates Heine the outcast 
Jew, the " French " pariah ; as if the poet were really undertaking a determined attack 
upon organized society in his travesty of a " winter's tale"! Deuischland is part of 
the same realm as that where the Midsummer NighVs Dream was played; its lorette- 
goddess, Hammonia, is no more concrete than Queen Titania, or, let us say, than 
Vashti who came to the anabaptist's bed at night in Schnabelewopski. But suppose 
Heine is as spiteful as Jehovah — whatever that may mean; it sounds like a curse of 

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some sort — it is a critical mistake to find this spite exemplified in the ironic antithesis 
of his lyrics, or his lyric-ballads. Where is the "spite" in the following? It sounds 
delightfully like the gay humor of a dance-rime: 



O Liebchen mit den Auglein klar! 

O Liebchen schon und bissig! 
Das Schworen in der Ordnung war, 

Das Beissen war iiberflussier. 



Der Sturm spielt auf zum Tanze, 
Er pfeift und saust und briillt; 

Heisa! wie springt das Schifflein! 
Die Nacht ist lustig und wild. 

Ein Fluchen, Erbrechen und Beten 
Schallt aus der Kajiite heraus; 

Ich halte mich fest am Mastbaum, 
Und wiinsche: War' ich zu Haus! 



Konntest du in ihren Augen 
Niemals bis zur Seele dringen, 

Und du bist ja sonst kein Esel, 
Teurer Freund, in solchen Dingen . 



Wenn ich eine Nachtigall ware, 
So flog' ich zu dir, mein Kind 

Und sange dir Nachts meine Lieder 
Herab von der griinen Lind'. 

Wenn ich ein Gimpel ware, 
So flog' ich gleich an dein Herz; 

Du bist ja hold den Gimpeln, 
Und heilest Gimpelschmerz. 



Die Thore jedoch, die liessen 
Mein Liebchen entwischen gar still; 

Ein Thor ist immer willig, 
Wenn eine Thorin will. 



Mensch, bezahle deine Schulden, 
Lang ist ja die Lebensbahn, 

Und du musst noch manchmal borgen, 
Wie du es so oft gethan. 



Doch jetzt ist alles wie verschoben 
Das ist ein Drangen ! eine Not ! 

Gestorben ist der Herrgott oben, 
Und unten ist der Teufel tot . 

Und alles schaut so gramlich triibe, 
So krausverwirrt und morsch und kalt 

Und ware nicht das bisschen Liebe, 
So gab' es nirgends einen Halt . 



Und wenn du schiltst und wenn du tobst 
Ich werd' es geduldig leiden; 

Doch wenn du meine Verse nicht lobst, 
Lass' ich mich von dir scheiden . 



Sie sangen von Liebessehnen, 
Von Liebe und Liebeserguss; 

Die Damen schwammen in Thranen 
Bei solchem Kunstgenuss . 



Teurer Freund, du bist verliebt, 
Und du willst es nicht bekennen, 

Und ich seh' des Herzens Glut 
Schon durch deine Weste brennen. 



Glaub nicht, dass ich mich erschiesse, 
Wie schlimm auch die Sachen stehn! 

Das alles, meine Siisse, 
Ist mir schon einmal geschehn. 



Das Fraulein stand am Meere 
Und seufzte lang und bang, 

Es riihrte sie so sehre 
Der Sonnenuntergang. 

Mein Fraulein! sei'n Sie munter, 
Das ist ein altes Stuck; 

Hier vorne geht sie unter 
Und kehrt von hinten zuriick. 



Further citation is surely unnecessary. So runs on the ironic antithesis to many 
a well-known line: Doldor, sind Sie des Teufels? Kriegen wir leicht den gottlichsten 
Schnupfen und einen unsterbliclien Hnsten. Many another lyric, beside those quoted 
above, is suddenly rounded to a barbed point of wit and sped upon its way with never 
a second thought for it. The use of this telling figure grows gradually so broad that 

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23 



it becomes a mannerism of the poet; it is no longer a mere foil for true sentimentality, 
it is an entity by itself. It grows to be a habit with Heine — a vice, if you will ; 
every mood of his is lightened by it, his coarseness finds expression in it; and when 
at times, sorely harried and whipped by his appetites and his ill-fortunes, he strikes 
out about him blindly like a spoiled child (as in certain of the Zeitgedichte, for 
instance), this figure of ironic antithesis transcends all limits and overwhelms his 
poetic utterance. 

But, it may be objected, why ascribe to the Schnaderhiipfel a figure which Heine 
ever used in his prose writings, which answered so perfectly to his personal tempera- 
ment, and of which he made such unlimited use ? As to the prose, Heine could, and 
doubtless did, find many a prototype in the storm-and-stress and romantic writings of 
that "transcendental buffoonery" of which he was so fond, of that laissez-aller which 
was part of the revolt against the visible universe. But there was no such precedent 
in poetry until Wilhelm Muller came upon the Schnaderhiipfel in Ziska and Schottky; 
for if there was one thing which the romantic lyric poet had taken more seriously, 
more sacredly, than he had himself, that one thing was his verse-compositions — those 
verses, that is to say, which were supposedly the real expression of his ego. For in 
multifarious foreign and trivial Gelegenheitsgedichte the romantic poet had tried his 
hand, but not his heart. 

Now, as to ironic antithesis suiting his personal temperament, and as to his large 
use of the figure, these are but two parts of one question. Of course, it suited Heine; 
(as "Walzel well says), "he did not fasten Stimmungsbrechung externally to his poems." 
And the better it suited him, the more was he prone to use it. But did he invent it ? 
No, for in two letters whose sincerity have never been doubted (even by the Heine 
critics) — the one to "Wilhelm Muller, the other to Schottky — Heine records the fact that 
an entirely new vista, a new conception of poetry, has been opened to him by the study 
of the Schnaderhiipfel. And, when we come to examine Heine's poems, we find that 
there is in his first verses — Junge Leiden — no single example of the epigrammatische 
Schluss, but that in all the others, written, as he said, after his eyes had been 
opened, there are instances galore, and, by an almost regular progression, the 
further he writes, the wider use we find of ironic antithesis. And lastly, and best, 
the humor of both Heine lyric and popular dance-rime is identical. That this poet 
developed the figure, once digested, to far other uses and to a greater incisiveness 
than the Schnaderhiipfel had ever cared to do, or had known how to do — is this aught 
but natural? Does the carefully reared hothouse plant lose its identity because it 
has been removed from the sunshine of the open roadside, and forced to growths 
uncontemplated in the economy of outdoor nature ? Wilhelm Muller, who introduced 
the dance-rimes in his Ldndliche IAeder, was content to leave them their simple, 
roguish rusticity ; Heine made of them one of the fullest expressions of his complex 
personality, by the process of distillation known alone to superlative genius. 

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